Taking a xenophobic page from today’s Republican Party, The North Carolina Democratic Party has paid for flyers which tout “Bringing the Arizona immigration crack down to North Carolina” on behalf of the NC Senate race of David Redwine of Shallotte. In mentioning Arizona and immigration crack down in the same breath, the NC Democratic Party has entered the sewer of race baiting politics which has been the domain of the Republican Party since the days of Nixon’s southern strategy. The southern strategy was designed to take advantage of white disenchantment in the south with the Democratic Party following passage of the Civil Rights Act under Johnson. By invoking Arizona’s controversial and partly unconstitutional SB 1070 (due to the supremacy clause of the Constitution) through this wording, the party is likely facing a backlash to come from many of its donors from urban and university areas of the state.

The Racist Underpinnings of Arizona’s SB 1070

The person that introduced Arizona’s SB 1070 was Republican state senator Russell Pearce. Mr. Pearce is famous in Arizona for an email sent to supporters that had a white nationalist bent. It accused the media of pushing a view of “a world in which every voice proclaims the equality of the races, the inerrant nature of the Jewish ‘Holocaust’ tale, the wickedness of attempting to halt the flood of non-White aliens pouring across our borders”. He was also caught on tape hugging a neo-Nazi. The person taking credit for writing the law is Republican Kris Kobach who is running for Kansas Secretary of State and is a birther. He is also an attorney for the Immigration Reform Law Institute. That is the legal arm of the immigration group FAIR (Federation For American Immigration Reform) which the Southern Poverty Law Center has noted for it’s racist attitudes along with its founder John Tanton. In a Southern Poverty Law Center Intelligence Report on Tanton and FAIR called, “Where Anti-Immigrant Zealots Like Lou Dobbs Get Their ‘Facts’ ” FAIR (founded by John Tanton in 1979) has been marked by

anti-Latino and anti-Catholic attitudes. It has mixed this bigotry with a fondness for eugenics, the idea of breeding better humans discredited by its Nazi Associations. It has accepted $1.2 million from an infamous, racist eugenics foundation. It has employed officials in key positions who are also members of white supremacist groups.

It goes on to mention that it has recently pushed racist conspiracy theories concerning Mexican take over designs on states in the southwest and mentions that current FAIR President Dan Stein had sought some advice from a racist political party in Belgium. Also mentioned is some internal documents named WITAN which were leaked to the press where Tanton warned of a “Latin onslaught” and their birth rates would force “the present majority to hand over its political power to a group that is simply more fertile.” He also was demeaning by saying they would “bring with them the tradition of the mordida (bribe), the lack of involvement in public affairs” and questioned their “educability”.

The Intricate Web Of Hatred, Money, And Political Power

In another report by the Southern Poverty Law Center titled, “The Puppeteer” which concerns Tanton and the intricate web of organizational funding of anti-immigrant groups, one can trace the money from right wing billionaires to organizations linked to Tanton, to the Republican Party and the seats of government power. It mentions that

the vast majority of American anti-immigration groups — more than a dozen in all — were either formed, led, or in other ways made possible through Tanton’s efforts.

It goes on to cite that a major funding arm

U.S. Inc., is a Tanton creation, and millions of dollars in financing comes from just a few of his allies, far-right foundations like those controlled by the family of Richard Mellon Scaife. …

Also it mentions that many of these politically connected activists are moving increasingly into groups such as the Council of Conservative Citizens which has around 15,000 members whose website recently described African Americans as

“a retrograde species of humanity.” …

But what is most disturbing for anyone that has studied the rise of fascism in Europe in the 20’s and 30’s as well as the US in the 20’s is the increasing connection to government these groups have. Many of the Constitutional protections put into the Constitution as a protection from tyranny have been removed since September 11th, 2001 and have not been restored even with the election of Obama and Democratic Party majorities. We still have prisons outside the rule of law where people are taken without charge or trial and are tortured or worse, extraordinary rendition, wiretapping without warrants, targeted killings, and “prolonged detention”. Following the post-9/11 sweeps of Arab American communities which resulted in indefinite detention of more than a thousand or two persons, many of these groups called for wider dragnets of Hispanic American communities. And in the wake of the plane attacks, there was rapid growth of the Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus led by right wing extremist (now former) Rep. Tom Tancredo (R), of Colorado. FAIR is considered legitimate to many members of the caucus.

About The Aforementioned Racist Eugenics Foundation

The eugenics foundation that gave $1.2 million dollars to FAIR is called The Pioneer Fund. It has links to sterilization efforts based on race and disability in America’s past as well as the eugenics effort in Nazi Germany. This background can be examined in the piece by Barry Mehler of the Southern Poverty Law Center titled “Race and ‘Reason’ Academic ideas a pillar of racist thought“. The founder of the Pioneer Fund was one Wickliffe P. Draper. In 1935, he traveled to Nazi Germany with an associate, Dr. Clarence Campbell, to attend the International Congress for the Scientific Investigation of Population Problems. In 1937, he founded the Pioneer Fund which was to fund race scientists and scholarships. It was headed by eugenicist Harry L. Laughlin, an advocate for restrictive immigration laws and compulsary sterilization of the mentally ill and mentally retarded. In 1938, he paid for and disseminated a book titled, “White America” written by white supremacist Earnest Servier Cox and sent a copy to Wilhelm Frick, the German Minister of the Interior. In later years, the fund has been intertwined in American politics and movements (beyond FAIR). As noted in the Southern Poverty Law Center report, Pioneer leaders such as Harry Weyher and Thomas F. Ellis have been part of an interlocking association of groups linked to the late former Senator Jesse Helms (R) NC. In fact, Ellis served as chairman of both the National Congressional Club and the Coalition For Freedom and he was a co-founder of Fairness In Media. So does the NC Democratic Party want to be associated with the legacy of Republican Jesse Helms?

A Great Tool For Further Republican Voter Suppression Of Minority Voters

Investigative reporter Greg Palast recently pursued a political angle to Arizona’a SB 1070 in a report titled, “Behind the Arizona Immigration Law: GOP Game to Swipe the November Election” where he gives his experiences in investigating suppression of Hispanic voters in Arizona. He wrote in the report that following the 2004 elections under Secretary of State Jan Brewer (now governor), at least 100,000 voters were blocked from registering to vote and that in 2005, the first year of the “Great Brown Out” one in three voters in Phoenix had their registrations rejected. Since a non-citizen attempting to register to vote is a crime punishable by jail time and turning over to immigration authorities, Palast sought out these 100,000 people but found none were sent to jail or handed over to authorities. It would appear that 100,000 Hispanic citizens were being denied the right to vote. This is similar to what happened in Florida in 2000 when Afican American voters were purged before the vote count was stopped and a Republican Supreme Court appointed G.W. Bush president.

No Self Respecting NC Democrat would want to be associated with such a flyer or the legacy of Jesse Helms. An attempt to contact Andrew Whalen, Executive Director of the North Carolina Democratic Party for a response before writing this failed. The flyer can be viewed at the right wing think tank charged with resegregating Wake County Public Schools into “community school zones” following the “tea party” takeover of that school board, The Civitas Institute’s website.

By now, many Americans are familiar with Arizona’s new anti-immigration law, SB 1070, and the controversy surrounding it. To some, it is the answer to Arizona’s undocumented worker problem while others see it for its fascist like approach in dealing with the problem instead of addressing the real issue, that being, the employers that hire undocumented workers to drive down wages for profit or to bust union labor. Truth is, free societies do not stop, single out, and detain people based on their racial or ethnic appearances and demand to “see their papers”. But no matter what side one may view the debate, many of Americans do not really know the beliefs and dark ties to history those that have brought the law forward have. They also, might not be familiar with the true motivations of the political class either. Let’s start by taking a look at a piece done by MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show and what was discussed.

Looking at the April 26th 2010 show and it transcripts, we gather the following insight

Before this bill was actually signed into law, we told you about the guy who introduced it in the first place. It’s this guy, Republican state senator Russell Pearce. Mr. Pearce is famous in Arizona for having sent an email to his supporters that included a white nationalist screed – accusing the media of pushing the view of ‘a world in which every voice proclaims the equality of the races, the inerrant nature of the Jewish ‘Holocaust’ tale, the wickedness of attempting to halt the flood non-White aliens pouring across our borders…’ Mr. Pearce sent that around to all his supporters, a move he latter apologized for. Russell Pearce is also famous for having been caught on tape hugging a neo-Nazi. …

But if you want to meet the guy who’s taking credit for writing the new law. That would be a gentleman named Kris Kobach. Kris Kobach is a birther. He’s running for secretary of state in Kansas right now. His campaign website today brags ‘Kobach Wins One in Arizona.’

The guy who helped write Arizona’s new ‘immigration’ bill is also an attorney for the Immigration Reform Law Institute. That’s the legal arm of an immigration group that’s called FAIR – the ‘Federation For American Immigration Reform.’ FAIR was founded in 1979 by a man named John Tanton. Mr. Tanton is still listed as a member of FAIR’s board of directors.

That’s FAIR, who helped write Arizona’s new anti-immigrant law. After John Tanton got FAIR off the ground, for nine of the first years of the group’s existence, the group reportedly received more than a million dollars in funding from something called The Pioneer Fund. The Pioneer Fund describes itself as a group formed ‘in the Darwinian-Galtonian evolutionary tradition, and the eugenics movement.’

At the center of the Tanton web is the nonprofit Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), the most important organization fueling the backlash against immigration. Founded by Tanton in 1979, FAIR has long been marked by anti-Latino and anti-Catholic attitudes. It has mixed this bigotry with a fondness for eugenics, the idea of breeding better humans discredited by its Nazi associations. It has accepted $1.2 million from an infamous, racist eugenics foundation. It has employed officials in key positions who are also members of white supremacist groups. Recently, it has promoted racist conspiracy theories about Mexico’s secret designs on the American Southwest and an alternative theory alleging secret plans to merge the United States, Mexico and Canada. Just last February, FAIR President Dan Stein sought “advice” from the leaders of a racist Belgian political party. …

As long ago as 1988, when a series of internal 1986 documents known as the WITAN memos were leaked to the press, Tanton’s bigoted attitudes have been known. In the memos, written to colleagues on the staff of FAIR, Tanton warned of a coming “Latin onslaught” and worried that high Latino birth rates would lead “the present majority to hand over its political power to a group that is simply more fertile.” Tanton repeatedly demeaned Latinos in the memos, asking whether they would “bring with them the tradition of the mordida [bribe], the lack of involvement in public affairs” and also questioning Latinos’ “educability.” …

In 1994, Tanton’s Social Contract Press republished an openly racist French book, The Camp of the Saints, with Tanton writing that he was “honored” to republish the race war novel. What Tanton called a “prescient” book describes the takeover of France by “swarthy hordes” of Indians, “grotesque little beggars from the streets of Calcutta,” who arrive in a desperate refugee flotilla. It attacks white liberals who, rather than turn the Indians away, “empty out all our hospital beds so that cholera-ridden and leprous wretches could sprawl between white sheets … and cram our nurseries full of monster children.” It explains how, after the Indians take over France, white women are sent to a “whorehouse for Hindus.” In an afterword special to Tanton’s edition of the novel, author Jean Raspail wrote about his fears that “the proliferation of other races dooms our race, my race, to extinction.”

While we are at it, let’s take a look at a report by the Southern Poverty Law Center titled, “The Puppeteer” concerning Tanton. The report begins with right wing hero U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo) and Brian Blibray, former Republican Rep from San Diego talking to 27 anti-immigration activists and funded by NumbersUSA, part of the interlocking network of independent groups associated with John Tanton. In that meeting, Tancredo said that countries were pushing immigration to “erode American sovereignty.

“China is trying to export people. It’s a policy for them, a way of extending their hegemony. It’s a government-sponsored thing.”

he said. Bilbray followed up by saying,

“We are creating a slave class that criminal elements breed in.”

Other notable quotes concerning this network and its power are as follows,

Praising the post-9/11 sweeps of Arab communities by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) that resulted in the indefinite detention of more than a thousand people, Bilbray called for the INS to carry out an enlarged dragnet. “We could have a terrorist coming in on a Latin name,” he said. …

In fact, the vast majority of American anti-immigration groups — more than a dozen in all — were either formed, led, or in other ways made possible through Tanton’s efforts.

The principal funding arm of the movement, U.S. Inc., is a Tanton creation, and millions of dollars in financing comes from just a few of his allies, far-right foundations like those controlled by the family of Richard Mellon Scaife. …

Finally, even as activists court increasing numbers of national politicians in the wake of Sept. 11, the Report’s investigation reveals that they are moving in large numbers into the arms of hate groups like the Council of Conservative Citizens — a 15,000-member organization whose website recently described blacks as “a retrograde species of humanity.” …

That such groups, with their increasingly direct links to racist organizations, should have real power in the nation’s capital may seem hard to believe.

But Americans have grown increasingly xenophobic in the wake of the September terrorist attacks, and the rapid growth of the Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus that Tancredo heads reflects that — from just 10 legislators prior to the attacks to 59 by May.

And of course there is the the Pioneer Fund funding issue, a fund that has had links to sterilization efforts based on race and disability in America’s past as well as the eugenics effort in Nazi Germany. a little background can be gleaned in ths piece by Barry Mehler titled, “Race and ‘Reason’ Academic ideas a pillar of racist thought“.

Behind the ideas of race scientists for the past half-century, there has been money — and lots of it.
If you scratch the surface of almost any of the prominent race scientists of recent decades, you will find the same well-endowed institution: the Pioneer Fund. Established in 1937 to “improve the character of the American people” by promoting the study of eugenics and the procreation of descendants of the original white colonial stock, Pioneer has funded many of the leading Anglo-American race scientists of the last several decades. …

It notes the grants the people the fund has issued grants to (so called race scientists) and also mentions political connections as well such as

The world of the Pioneer Fund goes beyond pure science. For example, Pioneer leaders Harry Weyher and Thomas F. Ellis have been part of an interlocking set of directorates and associations linking the Fund to groups connected to Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), according to The Washington Post.

While a Pioneer director, Ellis served as chairman of both the National Congressional Club and the Coalition for Freedom, and co-founder of Fairness in Media — all organizations linked to Helms. In the 1980s, Weyher, the longtime president of the Fund, was simultaneously lead counsel for Fairness in Media. …

In mentioning some of its grantees, it mentions William Shockley (1910-89), a physicist at Stanford best known for his “voluntary sterilization plan,” received $188,710 between 1971 and 1978.

In his famous 1969 attack on Head Start — the early education program that aims to help poor children — Jensen wrote in the prestigious Harvard Education Review that the problem with black children was that they had an average IQ of only 85. No amount of social engineering could improve that performance, he claimed, adding that “eugenic foresight” was the only solution.

The founder of the fund was Wickliffe P. Draper who

In August 1935, Draper traveled to Berlin to attend the International Congress for the Scientific Investigation of Population Problems. Presiding over the conference was Wilhelm Frick, the German Minister of the Interior. At the conference, Draper’s travel companion, Dr. Clarence Campbell delivered an oration that concluded with the words: “The difference between the Jew and the Aryan is as unsurmountable [sic] as that between black and white. … Germany has set a pattern which other nations must follow. … To that great leader, Adolf Hitler!” Three years later, when Draper paid to print and disseminate the book, White America, by Earnest Sevier Cox, an advocate of white supremacy and racial segregation, a personal copy was delivered to Frick.

In 1937, Draper founded the Pioneer Fund, a foundation intended to give scholarships to descendants of white colonial-era families, and to support research into “race betterment” through eugenics. The scholarships were never given, but the first project of the fund was to distribute two documentary films from Nazi Germany depicting their claimed success with eugenics. The Pioneer Fund was headed by the eugenicist, Harry H. Laughlin, an advocate for restrictive immigration laws and national programs of compulsory sterilization of the mentally ill and mentally retarded.

Despite the criticism and worries about funding, Laughlin’s belief in immigration
restriction and the value of the Nazis’ eugenics policies remained unshaken.
Two years after he received his honorary degree, there was once again a move to allow Jewish refugees to enter the country. This time, the move was prompted by the violence that swept Germany and Austria on the night of November 10-11, 1938—Kristallnacht or the “Night of the Broken Glass” as it was later
known. That night gangs of Nazis smashed, looted, and burned Jewish homes,
businesses, and synagogues.

A month later, Laughlin reported on current projects to Wickliffe Preston Draper, a millionaire who had recently established the Pioneer Fund to fund eugenics outreach:
You will be interested to know that the moving picture film “Eugenics in Germany” has proven very popular with senior high school students. Up to date the film has been loaned 28 times. …

Eugenics in Germany was a version of a Nazi propaganda film entitled “Erbkrank,” or “The Genetically Diseased.” After showing the entire movie at the Carnegie Institution in Washington, Laughlin secured funding from Draper’s Pioneer Fund to distribute an edited version to the general public. Although the film depicts Jews as particularly susceptible to “hereditary degeneracy,” Laughlin told readers of the Eugenic News that it contained “no racial propaganda of any sort.”

While having received funds of such a fund with a dark and dubious past does not translate into FAIR being the same as those that started the fund, it further pushes the thought that the draconian aspects of the Arizona law has a racial tinge that can easily lead to abuses. The proof that the Arizona Republican party and its voters have a racism problem is that the Arizona state House also passed a birther bill which the Arizona Senate wisely shelved.

While race may be the determining motivation for many anti-immigration groups, investigative reporter Greg Palast has been pursuing a more political angle to the passage of SB 1070 at this time. Knowing xenophobia of a tide of immigrants across the border has always been a part and parcel of Arizona, Palast believes the motivation and target of the Arizona Republican Party with this bill might not have anything to do with illegal immigrants, but lies more with legal immigrant citizens of the area given past Republican behavior. He cites both the behavior of Arizona Republicans in the past including Governor Jan Brewer who signed this particular bill into law and her voter purges as Secretary of State as well as the Bush administration/Karl Rove voter suppression tactics that were hallmark of such behavior (he and civil rights attorney Bobby Kennedy investigated Arizona in 2008). Since voting if one is not a citizen is a felony, he went to investigate the 100,000 who would be jailed for doing do so, but there weren’t any. All of this, of course, dovetails with the Republican lies of “voter fraud” and the ACORN disproven nonsense that followers of right wing media still swear to as being real. In his new investigative report titled, “Behind the Arizona Immigration Law: GOP Game to Swipe the November Election” he writes

Brewer, then Secretary of State, had organized a racially loaded purge of the voter rolls that would have made Katherine Harris blush. Beginning after the 2004 election, under Brewer’s command, no less than 100,000 voters, overwhelmingly Hispanics, were blocked from registering to vote. In 2005, the first year of the Great Brown-Out, one in three Phoenix residents found their registration applications rejected. …

Which raises the question: were these disenfranchised voters the criminal, non-citizens Brewer tagged them, or just not-quite-white voters given the José Crow treatment, entrapped in document-chase trickery?

The answer was provided by a federal prosecutor who was sent on a crazy hunt all over the Western mesas looking for these illegal voters. “We took over 100 complaints, we investigated for almost 2 years, I didn’t find one prosecutable voter fraud case.”

This prosecutor, David Iglesias, is a prosecutor no more. When he refused to fabricate charges of illegal voting among immigrants, his firing was personally ordered by the President of the United States, George W. Bush, under orders from his boss, Karl Rove.

I suggest readers here follow the link to Palast’s website and read the whole thing. He has it right when he says,

But that’s the point, isn’t it? Not to stop non-citizens from entering Arizona — after all, who else would care for the country club lawn? — but to harass folks of the wrong color: Democratic blue.

It should be noted that following the passage of SB 1070, the Republicans in Congress are not for going forward with comprehensive immigration reform right now (as this might harm the purge attempts) even though many of them are distancing themselves from the bill and its fascist and/or Soviet style elements. In fact Lindsey Graham (who is being harrassed by a racist anti-immigrant group) backed out of his climate change bill cosponsored by John Kerry over the issue of the possibility of comprehensive immigration reform being taken up. It appears Palast is right on the money.